


with a love like yours

by billykaplan



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Barebacking, Bloodplay, Clones, Codependency, Dubious Morality, Enemies to Lovers, Gunplay, Implied/Referenced Torture, Knifeplay, M/M, MAMA Era Powers (EXO), Praise Kink, Rimming, Temporary Character Death, Trust Issues, Undernegotiated Kink, Unhealthy Relationships, X-EXO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25877314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billykaplan/pseuds/billykaplan
Summary: Five thousand years is a long time to be alive. He’s seen emperors fall and wars lost and the birth of new, beautiful things too many times to count. And above all, Baekhyun has learned that people will always change, including himself.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Byun Baekhyun
Comments: 11
Kudos: 53





	with a love like yours

**Author's Note:**

> i’m back and worse than ever. i saw someone compare 2baek to hannigram and my brain went feral and i wrote this. fuck you. 
> 
> PLEASE heed the warnings: pretentious writing, knifeplay, gunplay, bloodplay, undernegotiated kink, unhealthy relationships, codependency, referenced past torture/experimentation, baekhyun has…serious issues and needs a therapist but instead he fucks his clone because If i made him fuck his clone. I dont make him bc i did. No i didnt ❤️
> 
> [here’s a playlist i made for this.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6CJlaHjkNt4LIUqnvHDw0h?si=fcg2I6TJTaSEfpLgoZCOdA)
> 
> rip to everyone who loves stage names but i’m different.

**act one. mercury**

Their intel was a load of shit. 

If he ever escapes out of this hellhole alive, Baekhyun is going to beat the shit out of Taemin and the rest of his group. The Red Force base is nearly impenetrable, and Junmyeon should’ve known better than to trust amateur information. 

Still, he’s inside the base. Maybe he’ll stumble upon their missing members by chance and also find an escape route by chance. Putting a lot up to chance. 

The hallways are dark, shadows encroaching on the dim, sterile lighting, all the classic villain’s lair type of stuff in the horror movies Jongin loves to watch so much. But it’s not the darkness that scares him—it’s the eerie silence, as if the very air itself is holding its breath. All of the silence is in his head, a reminder of when he was trapped here years ago. Perfectly normal to be uneasy. Baekhyun’s powers work, he has the sword on his belt, the stolen Sig Sauer in his jacket—he’s good. Just fine. 

After wandering another two levels and seeing no holding cells, or even people for that matter, he taps into his comm. “Hey, Myeon. Intel was wrong. I’ll try and wander around to find them, maybe grab the information out of someone, but no promises, alright?”

Silence. 

“Junmyeon?”

Static crackles before he hears an explosion through the device and Junmyeon’s panicked voice. “There’s only eight out here, Baekhyun—get the fuck out of there.”

“Eight? Whose—”

“Yours.”

Baekhyun swears under his breath. “I’ll be fine. Focus on what’s happening out there, and I’ll do what I can in here, okay?”

Junmyeon says, “Just get the fuck out. I think it’s a trap,” and Baekhyun is left in silence once again. 

Taking a deep breath with a hand on the hilt of his rapier, Baekhyun continues through the stainless steel halls. He passes room after empty room, sterile sanitizer dampening the iron stench of blood flooding his senses when he opens one of the doors to make sure it’s truly empty. Fuck, it’s nauseating. It reminds him too much of when he was trapped in here all those years ago, white beds and shiny needles stuck in his arm, blue fluids and red walls. Shaking, he shuts the door and presses on. They have to be here _somewhere_ —

“You’d think you’d check your surroundings better, darling,” says a new voice from behind him. 

Baekhyun stills, holding his breath, saying a truly impressive number of curse words in his head. He doesn’t turn, doesn’t move.

“What’s a pretty little thing like you doing in here?” the guy says, smooth, cool water on river rocks. His voice unsettles him, like hearing a recording of himself on those cassette tapes Minseok used to be obsessed with. He’s closer this time. “Don’t you know the big fight’s outside? They could really use your help, y’know, because your Jongin got a pretty nasty hit to his ankle from Kyūngsoo. So let’s say that you and I take a little detour—”

Using his light speed is his only choice at this point. He can only use it once in a short burst, and he prays to nothing in the hopes that his only shot will work. Baekhyun spins and lunges with his sword, the scream that pierces the silence of the hallway giving him a sick sense of satisfaction, silver-white hair the only thing he sees as the guy crouches down with his hands over his face. And Baekhyun doesn’t stay to assess his damage, runs as fast as he can with the sword unsheathed. Fuck, he doesn’t even know where he’s running to, just needs to get away. 

_“No!”_

Baekhyun expects a chase. He doesn’t expect a knife to embed itself in his calf. Fuck, it hurts, and he falls face-first to the floor with a grunt, the rapier skidding across the concrete flooring as he tastes blood on his tongue, but pain is secondary, so he flicks the safety off the gun and turns to fire—

And he’s face to face with himself. 

Their eyes meet, and Baekhyun feels a spark, an undercurrent. His heart beats once, twice. There’s a pause, a time freeze—the whisper of something intangible in the air as they face each other for the first time. 

A _hunger_. 

“Baëkhyun,” he breathes out.

His clone, hands up in surrender, grins at the name. It’s a bit gruesome with the slash across his nose and cheeks that drips blood down his face and onto the floor. “I am you, and you are me,” he singsongs. 

And yeah, he’s not an idiot; Baekhyun figured out the Red Force was attempting to clone them by the fourth DNA sample they took. Their clones are known about—just not talked about, because the concept of having a clone is just too fucking insane to believe unless you’re able to see them with your own two eyes. But seeing himself up close, when he’s still and staring at Baekhyun with something like wonder—it’s _himself_ , like looking in a mirror. Everything, down to the mole on the side of his nose and the shape of his lips. All but the color of his eyes and hair. Not to mention the ostentatious outfit, an unnecessary amount of belts wrapping around his waist and his well-fitted black suit, darker than the shadows around him. He’s everything Baekhyun wishes he could be, and a stab of jealousy courses through him. If only—

“Why are your eyes blue?” Baekhyun blurts out before he can think otherwise. He feels a blush crawling up his face. 

Baëkhyun laughs. It’s short, a burst forced out of him more than genuine humor. “Why are yours brown?” he retorts. 

The unexpectedness of the answer catches Baekhyun off guard, and so he says, “I don’t know.” He bites his lip. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

“Why don’t _you_ just kill _me_?”

“Do you have to repeat everything I say like that?”

“Who even brings a gun to a sword fight? That’s not fair at all; it’s so impersonal,” Baëkhyun continues, like Baekhyun didn’t speak at all, “but that’s beside the point. You could’ve killed me, but you didn’t, yet you still…” Baëkhyun licks his lips. “I’d like to make a deal with you and your group. A proposition.”

Baekhyun cocks his head to the side in silent question. 

“I think we can come to terms—”

Baekhyun points the gun at Baëkhyun’s leg and shoots, the shot echoing through the silent halls like thunder. 

“What the _fuck_?” he screams as he clutches his leg in exactly the same place the knife is embedded in Baekhyun’s. “I’m just trying to talk to you, you bastard—”

The bullet simply grazed his leg, enough to injure and cause a distraction but not impair. Crawling away is difficult on the slippery floor, but Baekhyun manages to grab his sword and clamber to his feet and limp down the hallway. Pain is tolerable; he’s had worse, liquid fire in his veins until he passed out. 

“Junmyeon, leave without me,” he rasps into his comm. “I’m injured. I can walk, but if you’re overwhelmed, you need to get out right now, I repeat, _get out_ —”

And Baëkhyun launches himself into Baekhyun’s waist to keep him from limping away any further, slamming him to the floor again. The sword lands barely out of reach. Baekhyun is… He’s not usually like this; he’s alert, intense, aware. He’s one of their best fighters, but right now, static clouds his brain, iron fills his lungs, and it’s _heavy_. Baëkhyun tugs the knife out of his leg—fuck, that’s going to leave a nasty scar until his body fully heals in a week—and flips Baekhyun over until he’s straddling him, blade at his throat.

Baekhyun swallows against it, feeling it dig into his skin, and he whispers, “What are you waiting for? Do it.”

The snort that Baëkhyun gives him scares Baekhyun more than the knife against his throat. “I can’t kill you, idiot. We’re fucking connected.” He releases his grip on Baekhyun’s shoulder to tap his finger against Baekhyun’s temple. “It’s all up in here, baby boy. You die, I die.”

“Don’t fucking call me that. What do you want? You work for the Red Force, you—”

“You think I care about the Force? I don’t give a shit about them.”

Baekhyun glances at the snarl on Baëkhyun’s lips. His own lips. Red and raw with blood. “Then what do you want?”

“I want your _help_. No fucking shooting me, no fighting or killing each other.” There’s a pause as Baekhyun processes that, but his clone moves on. “They can’t control us. They’ve tried and failed. They’re hoping our original selves destroy us because they can’t, and they were hoping that by capturing a few of you, the rest of your group would be stupid enough to try to rescue them. What I want, what _we_ want, is freedom from this prison. It’s freedom or death. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like dying today.”

There’s earnestness in Baëkhyun’s ice blue eyes. There’s honesty and desperation and a tinge of something else Baekhyun can’t place, and before he can think of the million reasons why he shouldn’t believe his clone who works for the Red fucking Force, he licks his lips and finds himself asking, “Junmyeon is our leader. Why are you asking me and not him?”

“Because Junmyeon wouldn’t understand us, wouldn’t wait and listen. He sees us as evil. Absolutes. Despite cutting my face open and shooting me in the leg, you do not. I _know_ you. You are our only hope.”

“You are evil,” Baekhyun automatically responds, but the words are tasteless, a recording drilled into him over the decades. “You work for the Red Force, you—”

“Did you not hear what I just fucking said?” Baëkhyun grits out. “None of us like being the puppets of evil, and we’re trying to escape from them because we hate it here. You _know_ what they’re capable of in this place.”

And he does, Baekhyun knows exactly what happens behind each of these walls, how they tear someone down piece by piece until they’re nothing but a shell. To put it simply, it’s hell. He wouldn’t wish it upon his worst enemy…

Baekhyun sighs. “And how do you think we’ll be able to help you?”

The glimmer of relief that flits across Baëkhyun’s expression shouldn’t make Baekhyun feel—good. Feel _right_. He swallows against the blade again. 

“So when they captured you, they took your power orbs to weaken you, right?” When Baekhyun nods, the other continues, “They can’t do that with us. We don’t have power orbs—it’s just innately in us, and they try to use those dampening collars, but Kyūngsoo can easily break out of them. They can’t control us, so they want us dead so they can make more controllable clones or something. Fuck if I care about their other plans. Now, what matters is that we’re still powerful. We can’t be taken down as easily as you guys can. You know how to make illusions, right?”

Baekhyun arches an eyebrow, affronted. “It’s one of the first things I learned how to do.”

His own smile reflects back at him—the same but…different. A bit more unhinged. “So I have this theory that if we combine our powers together, we can exponentially increase our powers, create something _permanent_.”

Something clicks inside Baekhyun’s brain, like a puzzle piece he didn’t know was missing. “You want to cause a mass illusion so you can escape forever. A permanent illusion.” It’s not a question. There’s genuine admiration in Baekhyun’s voice because although it’s a fairly simple plan, the idea of combining their powers… He’s only thought to destroy them, not combine them. 

Baëkhyun grins. “Exactly.”

“Alright, that’s good to know and all, but I still need to rescue—” 

“That’s my end of the deal. Your group will help us escape, and my group will help you rescue your three precious group members, and together, we can erase us from their memories once and for all, and we’re all free. Capiche?” 

It’s absolutely insane. 

It’s his only way out of here, though. 

“Fuck. Fine. Deal,” Baekhyun says, “but how are we gonna convince my group of this plan?”

“Just play along with me, sweetheart,” is all the response he gets before Baëkhyun holsters his knife and unbuckles one of his belts with a snap. 

—

As Baëkhyun drags him along the dark corridor, closer to the fighting, Baekhyun wonders if this idea isn’t a mistake. 

“This plan sucks,” he mutters around the makeshift gag in his mouth. His wrists burn from the belt tied around them; his face throbs from the (completely unnecessary) beating that Baëkhyun gave him, blood running hot from a cut on his brow. At least he gave as good as he got—Baëkhyun has a lovely split lip to add to the rapidly healing cut across his face and the gunshot wound in his calf. He’s barely limping, too, apparently as immune to pain as Baekhyun is. Something about that settles unwell in his gut. 

“What was that, love?” Baëkhyun asks sweetly. His eyes meet Baekhyun’s, glittering with mischief—he’s enjoying this for some godawful reason. “Can’t really understand you at the moment.”

Baekhyun tries to convey his dismay at this whole situation with his eyes alone. 

With a click of his tongue, Baëkhyun says, “Let’s get it,” and shoulders the door open to the desert outside, pushing Baekhyun through with the knife to his throat again. He tries to back away from it, but Baëkhyun forces him to his knees, nicking the sensitive skin as he does, drawing more blood that drips onto the sand. He must look like a mess at this point, which is the basic idea, and his doppelgänger is a similar disaster of blood and bruises from their scuffle, but it still takes a full minute for someone to notice them. 

“Baekhyun!” Jongdae cries out, a split-second of distraction to let Sehūn throw him against the building’s wall, where he crumples. Baekhyun growls low in his throat. 

The yell catches the attention of both Junmyeons, though.

“Let’s talk!” Baëkhyun shouts at them. “Temporary truce?”

Junmyeøn releases Sehun from his chokehold and drops him onto the sand before stalking over. The original Junmyeon runs over to where Jongdae lies, motionless. 

The clone version is so much more terrifying than the original, Baekhyun thinks as he draws closer—vivid red hair, a cruel scar around his eye, head to toe in red leather. His Junmyeon is sweet, kind-hearted, a bit of a pain in the ass. This one reminds him too much of the devil. 

“You convinced him?” Junmyeøn says, monotone. 

“Wish I could’ve done what I really wanted to convince him,” Baëkhyun drawls, “but yeah, he’s with the plan.”

Junmyeøn’s face wrinkles with distaste. “You’re disgusting.” Looking at Baekhyun, he says, “We don’t want to be here. We just want to live our own lives without their influence.”

Baëkhyun shouts at everyone to _stop fucking fighting, don’t you understand what a truce fucking means?_ as Junmyeøn maintains uncomfortable eye contact with Baekhyun. He holds his head high despite his compromising position, chin tilted up. Like hell is he gonna act like the victim in this situation. 

Their silent battle breaks, and the way Junmyeøn’s gaze falls to Baëkhyun’s hand resting in his hair makes something cold trickle down Baekhyun’s spine. 

“If there’s a truce, then why’s he still being held like that?” interrupts a new voice, and Baekhyun nearly rolls his eyes. Chanyeol can show up at the worst possible time sometimes. 

“Because he likes being in this position for me, fireball,” replies Baëkhyun. 

Baekhyun suddenly understands all the comments, the disgusted and unsettled looks on Junmyeøn’s face, the snarl Chanyeol lets out as a recovered Sehun has to restrain him from throwing fire at Baëkhyun’s smirk. He can’t be saying that he wants to—

Baëkhyun leans down and whispers into Baekhyun’s ear, soft and melodic, “I think you look great in this position, love, even if they don’t. And don’t try to deny that you wouldn’t like this, _us_ —I am you, and you are me.”

That’s the second time Baëkhyun has said that now. They’re not the same person, they _can’t_ be, but when Baekhyun thinks about it, he’s not completely averse to…them. The idea of it. Baëkhyun looks good in his outfit, leaving little to the imagination. He thinks about his current black hair meshing with Baëkhyun’s silver-white hair as they kiss, their lips— _his_ lips—and going further, pressing Baëkhyun into his flimsy mattress and taking—

And that scares him. 

He takes a shaky breath in through the cloth gag, ignores his thoughts and Baëkhyun’s words. “Cameras,” Baekhyun mumbles. When his other half leans in closer, he says louder, “Cameras.” 

“Oh, our Jongdāe already took care of those,” says Baëkhyun flippantly. “He fries them every time they let him out of the collar, and even if he can’t, Sehūn and I take care of them. No worries.” With a soft noise, he then uses the knife to cut through the cloth of his gag and the belt binding his wrists. “There you go, darling.”

“Thanks,” Baekhyun mutters after ripping the gag out of his mouth and rubbing his wrists. He looks at Baëkhyun, the way the sunlight glints off his white hair and blue eyes and the drying blood on his lips, the edge of the silver-handled blade he’s used against Baekhyun. He’s enchanting. 

Baëkhyun simply shrugs and flips the knife in his hand, sliding it into the holster on his thigh. “Everyone gather around here without trying to kill each other!” he yells. 

They all trickle in—Minsëok and Jøngin, a limping Jongin appearing next to Baekhyun so suddenly it startles him, Kyūngsoo and Yixīng. They line up opposite of each other like some cheesy comic book battle; Sehun’s placating hand on Chanyeol is the only thing keeping the latter from entering a full-on brawl again. 

Jongin asks if he’s okay, and Baekhyun averts his eyes from Jongin’s worry and brushes the sand off of his clothes as he stands. He’s fine; he just needs his plan to be understood and followed through. 

“Maybe you should—”

Interrupting him, Baekhyun says, “I’m perfectly fine,” and winks at Jongin, who stills. 

“You would say that,” Jongin answers before disappearing with a _pop_. 

And as Baekhyun turns to face his clone, he says, “Sorry about this,” before unleashing his powers with a scream. 

There’s a lot that the Red Force did with their experiments, drugging and torturing and worse, but whatever horrific chemical cocktail they gave him increased his powers exponentially, way beyond what he was able to accomplish previously. Compared to the others, he’s now the most powerful in the entire group, outshining even the elementals and Jongin with his teleportation. His body simply thrums with insatiable power. A single touch and he can change the color of someone’s hair or shirt, or he can blind them, or he can create an illusion. A distraction. 

The other eight clones clamp their hands over their ears or eyes, trying to shield themselves from the illusions, but Baekhyun implanted it in their minds. It’s only temporary. They’ll live. 

_Pop._

Jongdae and Junmyeon, Sehun and Chanyeol, all of them have disappeared. 

Escape plan, successful. 

“What did you do?” Baëkhyun shouts before knocking him into the sand, grabbing the lapels of his jacket and shaking him like a rag doll. “Let them go! This is a truce!”

Oh. Baekhyun tries his powers again and again on his clone, yet Baëkhyun’s eyes shine clear. Fuck. 

“We’re trying to help you!” Baëkhyun screams at him as the rest of the clones scream as well, seeing things that aren’t really there. Maybe Baekhyun reached too far back in the recesses of his mind for a simple trick. “We want to be free from here, we want this all to end, please, _please_ , Baekhyun—”

_Pop._

Jongin tugs on Baekhyun’s hand, and Baekhyun foolishly tugs on his clone’s arm, and they journey into limbo. 

—

“You shouldn’t have brought him here.”

Baekhyun shrugs, listless. Baëkhyun is locked away in one of the mansion’s remodeled prison cells—who knew rich people in mansions owned their own prisons back in the days before the war?—and is subdued by drugs forced on him by the others. In silence, he stared and watched as they held down and injected Baëkhyun with a cocktail of chemicals, betrayal in the other’s eyes shining before they slipped shut. 

The memory stings more than it should. 

Junmyeon runs a hand through his dark hair, turns to Jongin in the corner. “And you can’t bring him back?” 

Jongin shrugs. “I could.”

“But?”

“I can move people if they aren’t touching me, but only if the middleman is insistent on the other person being there as well. This was Baekhyun’s intention, not mine. He brought the clone here for a reason.”

“And why did you bring him here, Baekhyun?” Junmyeon’s anger is cold and direct. 

“I…want to question him. He knows a lot.” Junmyeon scoffs, downright disbelieving, but Baekhyun continues, “And I don’t believe he was lying when he said the clones want their freedom, but having all of them be here at once would be too dangerous as we couldn’t overpower them in case it was a trap. So I chose to bring one of them back with me. I wanted Baëkhyun with me. I _want_ him with me. I think he can tell us things we wouldn’t know otherwise.”

Chanyeol says, “You’re insane.”

Baekhyun ignores him. “Let me talk to him, question him, gain his trust. Please. Maybe we can put an end to all of this, once and for all.”

Junmyeon picks at an invisible spot on his finger and sighs, and Baekhyun is smiling in triumph even before he says, “Very well. But he’s your responsibility. If he escapes and kills us all—”

“He won’t. Where would he run to?”

His rhetorical question is met with silence; Baekhyun nods once at Junmyeon and ignores Chanyeol’s pissed off glances before taking his leave. He has someone to question, after all. 

—

The musty smell of the basement reminds him of millennia ago, when the twelve of them crash-landed on Earth and sought to make a new home and blend amongst the humans already living there. Everything was new, ripe for the taking. Gods amongst men turned into ghosts and memories. 

It’s a tomb. 

Baekhyun locks the door behind him before he snaps his fingers to turn the overhead lights on, artificial light flooding the square room. There’s no bed, no windows, nothing decorating the cell except Baekhyun and his unruly clone. 

“Fancy meeting you here, darling,” Baëkhyun drawls, his lithe body leaning against the opposite wall as he feigns indifference. “Thought you abandoned me after kidnapping me, drugging me, and locking me in your basement. It’s been a hell of a first date.”

“You should still be sedated,” says Baekhyun quietly. 

“And you shouldn’t be betraying yourself, yet here we both are, a wrench in the machine.”

“You keep saying—”

“I am you, and you are me, Baekhyun.” His messy hair gleams in the fluorescent lights as he stares Baekhyun down. “I know exactly why you brought me here, you know exactly why I’m letting you talk to me and keep me here instead of killing you and walking free, and I truly think we should stop playing these annoying little lies with each other so we can actually get somewhere productive.”

Baekhyun sighs. “Why didn’t the drugs work on you?”

“They did. I have a fast metabolism, faster than yours at any rate. I heal quicker, process information faster. I am built to be _better_. Next question.” Baëkhyun snaps his fingers, impatient even though he has all the time in the world. 

“Do you trust my group at all?”

“No.” _Snap._

“Are you here as a spy?”

“Really? That’s the best you got? Keep going.” _Snap._

“Are you trying to seduce me?”

A sly smile creeps onto Baëkhyun’s face, one that reveals everything and reveals nothing. “I know you feel it, too. That… _special connection_.”

And he does. Baekhyun feels the string between them drawn taut, a fishing line with too many knots and no lure. It disgusts him, revolting in the worst possible way, yet… Yet. Here he is. Baëkhyun and his damn leather outfit and his pink lips, the way his eyes go all hooded when he’s trying to work his way into Baekhyun’s good graces. He’s everything Baekhyun wishes he could be in his darkest fantasies, and he’s everything Baekhyun despises about himself. 

The stab wound in his leg throbs underneath the makeshift bandage Chanyeol put on him when he shifts his weight, and it reminds him of the final question he needs an answer to. 

“Why don’t you use your knife to escape?”

Baëkhyun unsheathes the silver knife and twirls it in his palm before he pushes off the wall, brushing past Baekhyun and trailing his fingers along his shoulders. Baekhyun shivers but stands still. 

“Are you wondering why I used an illusion to hide it from everyone else? Easy. I don’t want to be caught unarmed in case someone from your side thinks I’m not worth keeping around.” Baëkhyun’s fingers trace across Baekhyun’s collarbones as he crosses in front of him, continuing to circle around him as he speaks. “Or are you wondering why I haven’t picked the lock to escape? Why haven’t I stabbed you and taken the key to my freedom? Choices, choices…

“Who knows you’re down here?” asks Baëkhyun, changing topics. 

“No one.” Baekhyun stifles a gasp as Baëkhyun’s hand dances across his lower back. And he doesn’t know why he hasn’t moved, why he’s letting Baëkhyun keep twirling that damn silver knife in his hand so mesmerizingly, why he’s letting Baëkhyun touch him without recoiling in repulsion or fear. His pulse beats heavy in his ears. _One, two. One, two._

Baëkhyun stops in front of him then, facing each other. His hand presses feather-light touches up Baekhyun’s neck and onto his jaw, invisible but scorching marks. He takes the dagger and licks a stripe up the shining edge of it, seemingly immune to the pain of it as Baekhyun swallows around the sharp rocks suddenly lodged in his throat at the sight of the single trail of blood— _his_ blood—running down the knife onto Baëkhyun’s fingers. 

“You’re sick,” whispers Baekhyun. 

His clone leans in closer. “ _We_ are sick,” he says before placing a bloody kiss on Baekhyun’s cheek. 

And when Baekhyun snaps out of his trance, he runs out of the door, locking it and securing the key on the chain around his neck with shaking fingers, and he can hear Baëkhyun laughing. 

He focuses on wiping the drying blood off his cheek rather than the obvious bulge in his pants. 

—

“Do you ever feel a…connection to them?”

“Them?” Sehun hums, flipping a page in his magazine that was published decades ago. Half of the pages are missing. He seems almost pretentious like this, spread on the recliner as Jongin naps lightly in his bed, licking his finger before turning a crumbling page. 

Baekhyun stares at the splint on Jongin’s ankle so he doesn’t have to see the expression either of them has when he says, “Them. The clones.”

The pages stop rustling. “Not particularly,” says Jongin sleepily. “My counterpart seems sad more than anything.”

“You pity them?”

Raising an eyebrow, Jongin says, “And you don’t?”

“They’re clones made against their will and forced to serve under a controlling regime where they have no authority, no say. If anything, they benefit the least because if the Red Force wins, they’ll be killed immediately.” Half of Sehun’s magazine crumbles off of the flimsy staples holding it together and slithers onto the floor. He sighs before throwing the rest into the trash. “They’re puppets. Toys. None of us are human, yet we still feel and act like humans, so it’s only natural to pity those less fortunate than us.”

“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you speak,” Baekhyun says. 

“Shut up, stop trying to change the subject that you brought up,” says Jongin, stretching his arms above his head with a yawn. “What we mean is that, yeah, we’ve thought about them. After thinking about it, I don’t think they were lying either. Maybe your intentional mistake can work out in our favor. I support your weird attempt to get closer to him instead of just putting him out of his misery.”

“Just don’t get too close,” Sehun interjects. 

With a sad smile, Jongin echoes, “Don’t get too close.”

—

Baëkhyun’s face when he sleeps is serene, peaceful compared to when he’s awake. More innocent, less…alluring. A piece of artwork to analyze between the pulses of his heartbeat that always seem to stutter in his presence. The tug in his gut hasn’t lessened any since yesterday. Or the day before. Or the previous twenty years. 

“It’s rude to stare, or did no one ever teach you that?” comes Baëkhyun’s low voice, startling Baekhyun. 

He covers his embarrassment up with a stony expression. “Eat,” he demands, throws an apple in Baëkhyun’s general vicinity. 

Baëkhyun catches it and arches one annoyingly perfect eyebrow at him, perfect like the rest of his stupid face. Yeah, he has the exact same face as Baekhyun, but he’s somehow more ethereal, even with the scar across his nose and cheeks that stands out in the artificial lighting. He wonders how long it took to clean the blood off. 

“You should wear a better outfit,” Baëkhyun says in response. He tosses the apple in the air and catches it again with disinterest as he stretches on his back on the floor like a cat. “You look like you’re an extra in some shitty sci-fi movie where it’s the goody-two-shoes government against the big, scary aliens who eat people. My advice is to wear something that accentuates your shoulders and your waist, give people something to look at—”

“You know what sci-fi movies are?”

Baëkhyun taps his finger on his lips and winks. “Shhh. I get out sometimes. Gotta live a little when your only life is four white walls and IV drips.

“Anyway,” he continues, “I don’t eat often. I drink sometimes, but I don’t necessarily need to eat because my power gives me all the energy I need. Save this for yourself, as a treat.” 

“As a treat?”

“Unless you want something else as a treat,” Baëkhyun murmurs, his gaze turning dark. 

Baekhyun backs into the wall as Baëkhyun gets up and stalks toward him, all the haunting grace of some fallen angel with his silver-white hair. The rings on his fingers glimmer as he takes a slow bite of the apple and swallows before holding it up to Baekhyun’s lips. 

“Take a bite, darling.”

“Don’t call me that,” he mutters as he jerks his chin up and away. 

“But you like it,” whispers Baëkhyun, shifting closer and placing his hand on top of Baekhyun’s where it’s gripping the hilt of his rapier. 

And there’s that sensation again, that gripping force that keeps drawing Baekhyun back to this cell and confronting his clone, that burning ache in his chest. An all-consuming fire. Baëkhyun is all he can think about anymore, and having him millimeters away isn’t helping the pull in his gut, the _need_. 

“Do you feel it, too?” Baëkhyun’s breath is cool on his cheek. “None of the others ever said that they felt what I feel, this… _obsession_ with their counterpart.”

“Is that what you would call this? An obsession?”

“It’s what I feel.”

And their faces are close, so close that he can see the way that Baëkhyun’s eyelashes flutter when he looks down at his lips for a brief moment. When Baëkhyun leans forward and kisses him, he’s calm. It’s simple, so unlike the rest of him that Baekhyun melts into it, lets Baëkhyun grip his waist and pull him closer. Sticky-sour-sweet. It’s rare to find fresh fruit, but there’s an abandoned orchard down the road that Baekhyun wanders around in when he simply needs to think, and he saw the apple and thought of Baëkhyun. Not of his friends, his family—his clone, the one who threw a knife at him and gagged him and who he’s currently holding in captivity. Who seems to like the fact that he’s being held here as long as he gets to see Baekhyun. Who slides a thigh between Baekhyun’s legs and tilts his head and lets out a breathy whine as the kiss deepens, like he was _made_ to do this, to have Baekhyun—

Reality snaps back into place like cracking ice. He shoves Baëkhyun away and the want washes over him again, but his mind is panicking, because that’s his clone, he shouldn’t, he can’t—

“I can’t, I can’t—”

Baëkhyun licks his lips, shining, and fuck, Baekhyun is never, ever going to forget the taste of himself. 

“Hey, relax. You’re fine.”

“This isn’t _normal_ ,” Baekhyun hisses. “It’s not normal, it’s not right, it’s not okay to—to think things about my _clone_ like that, it’s borderline narcissistic and disturbing and—”

A warm finger traces along his jawline. “Who says it’s wrong?”

“Everyone? Society?”

“The same society that destroyed themselves? Fuck ’em, then,” says Baëkhyun before he leans in again, softer this time, and the yearning in his chest quiets. His mouth is warm and perfect and everything Baekhyun never gained from all of his one night stands over the centuries. A sense of completion. Stability. Breathe in, out. 

Baëkhyun wipes away the tear that falls down Baekhyun’s cheek. “You delight in wickedness and then berate yourself for the delight,” he says. “Feel it. _Embrace_ it.”

“Why?”

With an endearing tilt of his head, Baëkhyun responds with a simple, “Why not?”

When Baekhyun leaves, he pauses in the hallway before the door that leads upstairs and takes the apple out of his pocket. Baëkhyun must have slipped it in there when he wasn’t paying attention. Maybe when they were kissing. 

He bites it. 

It’s sweet. 

—

Dreams are inconsistent. It’s difficult to sleep when his life is at stake, when he’s afraid to shut his eyes in case he relives room after endless room, dappled green forests and fire, the feeling of freedom as he falls into the sea. Clear, blue waters that shimmer and sparkle, tempting. Warm sunlight. He fell to escape but relives the fall in his dreams sometimes. Ironic. 

Dreams are inconsistent until Baëkhyun enters his life and all he knows when he closes his eyes is the sound of the waves hitting the rocks as he stares out at the raging sea. Something is new tonight. He leans on the shoulder offered to him. 

Baekhyun wakes to salt and silver on his tongue and renewed determination. 

—

“What do you see when you dream?”

“Nothing,” answers Baëkhyun. “I see black and hear silence, as do you.”

His lie hurts in a way, a paper cut on his knuckle that won’t stop bleeding no matter how many bandages he puts on. Everyone dreams, don’t they? It’s just a matter of figuring out if it’s reality or not. 

“I see the sea,” says Baekhyun, crouching in front of his other half who looks up at him with a thousand paper cuts. “I hear the waves crashing and taste the salt and brine on my lips. I dream about it every night without fail. But last night was different.”

“Was it?” Baëkhyun picks at a well-manicured nail. 

“I saw you there.” Baëkhyun freezes. “And you know what you said to me? You said, ‘I hope that someday you will remember this moment.’ So what is this moment?”

A hum. That’s all Baëkhyun responds with, but Baekhyun is sick of the games they play every time he comes in here, Baëkhyun all sensual and coy while he takes the brunt of the teasing. Baekhyun wraps his hand around his clone’s throat and shoves him back into the wall, taking note of the low moan he lets out. He’s the one who gathers close to Baëkhyun this time, the one who gazes at his lips, who holds all of the cards in his hands. 

Baëkhyun says quietly, “I think we should begin to learn to trust each other.”

“Is that what this is? Trust?” Baekhyun asks. The other gasps as his fingers tighten around his throat, little by little. “Should I trust you?”

“I trust you.” Baëkhyun licks his lips, not seductive or tantalizing, but anxious. Nervous. “It’s… It was a shock when they told me that I am not actually…myself. That I have another, someone exactly like me in every way, who’s out there, breathing, and I exist solely because of him. That took some time to process. I went to the sea to find myself, my mental self. I needed to find out who I was.”

“And did you?”

“If you flip a coin, the side that lands downward isn’t erased or gone in any way, simply hidden from view.” 

“No cryptic shit.”

Baëkhyun smiles, small and slow like the plants at the end of winter. “Yes, I did. I think of the sea and ground myself with the white sands and warm sunlight. I am you, and you are me—ultimately, we are different people with different experiences, yet we are exactly the same.”

“A reflection in a mirror.”

“If the mirror is shattered, yes.”

Baekhyun lets go of his neck, grasps Baëkhyun’s hand in his own. Identical. The cuts and bruises from their fight have already healed over except for the new fingerprints on his throat and, of course, the scar across his nose and cheeks. He wonders if Baëkhyun has the power to keep wounds from healing since it should have disappeared by now. “You think yourself as broken.”

“Oh, darling,” says Baëkhyun, “everyone’s a little broken. We’ve gone further and crushed the shards of glass into splinters with no chance of reparation.” 

“Good thing we’ve got time then.”

And Baëkhyun throws his head back and laughs. 

—

Junmyeon sits at his desk and waits, just as he sat as a royal advisor for so many rulers and how he will sit and devise a plan to escape right before the world ends. It’s how Junmyeon works. Sit, anticipate, acknowledge. No doubt that he’s a good leader, but Baekhyun would rather throw himself headfirst into the world to see the dirt and grime for himself, to get a taste of what everyone else sees and feels. Baëkhyun is the same—he sacrificed himself and his dignity to be taken into enemy territory in an effort to save his own group. Baekhyun may make many terrible choices, but he isn’t a fool, and Baëkhyun planned his capture from the beginning. 

He admires that. 

When he brings Baëkhyun in, unbound and free, Junmyeon raises an eyebrow. “Can we trust them?”

Baekhyun swallows. He turns to face his doppelgänger, his other half—maybe his better half, if he’s the leader of his own group—and as he gazes into his almost innocent, cunning eyes, Baekhyun comes to a conclusion. 

The sky outside the window dims, and the solar eclipse overhead makes Baekhyun’s very soul feel alight with something new. 

“Yes, we can trust them.”

Baëkhyun reaches out to take Junmyeon’s hand. “So, when do we start?”

—

**act two. venus**

There’s a mirror that Baekhyun sees in the mansion sometimes when he wanders, one that sits in the little side room that has some sort of fancy name like _parlor_. It’s ornate, full-length, cracked in the center because he punched it while in one of his episodes. Bearing the sight of oneself is too much sometimes. 

In his dream, it’s solid again. No marks, no cracks, just the sight of his reflection, except he has silver-white hair and ice blue eyes. 

He and his reflection move at the same time, same pace. Placing his hand on the mirror, he says, “Show me.”

His reflection—Baëkhyun—says, “No. Show _me_ ,” and his hand reaches through the mirror to grab Baekhyun by the wrist and drag him in.

—

“You’re awfully close to Baëkhyun after your little interrogation sessions,” says Chanyeol after they’ve returned to their room for the night. And then, “You don’t even know him, really.”

Baekhyun laughs, hollow because this whole situation isn’t actually funny at all. Their meeting at the neutral location of an abandoned café had taken almost no time—Red Force is bad, everyone wants to live, the originals just want their group to be whole again, the clones want their freedom. Junmyeon and Baëkhyun shook on it, and that was that. Having all of the clones leave at once for days would be too suspicious, so only a couple of them, Baëkhyun and Chanyeøl, chose to leave. _We’re the biggest rule breakers there,_ Baëkhyun said, _so they won’t find it suspicious that we’ve left._ Jongin travels to the café at 20:00 every day to relay information about their plans to his clone. Rinse and repeat a dozen times. 

(A dozen times he finds himself outside Baëkhyun’s door and forces himself away before he can step inside and make a mistake he can’t fix. Their connection hasn’t lessened any despite their separation; Baekhyun wants to sink his teeth into something. Into someone.)

He runs a hand through his hair, a tad overgrown. He’s been too busy to think about things like haircuts. Getting off the bed and pacing the other way, Baekhyun says, “You’re awfully hateful toward Chanyeøl,” because he feels like being a bitch and doesn’t want to confront his own emotions.

“Maybe because he tried to fucking kill me!”

“He can’t kill you, Yeol, because he’d die, too.”

Chanyeol makes a frustrated sound and stands, towering over Baekhyun and blocking his pacing path. If it was anyone but Chanyeol, whose intimidation level is next to zero, he would be cowering, but it _is_ Chanyeol, and Chanyeol rescues stray cats and dogs and even a mouse once just because he feels bad for them, wants to care for them. All he has going for him is his height and his fire. Baekhyun is afraid of neither. 

“Why are you so nervous?” Baekhyun asks. “Are you jealous?”

“I’m _worried_ , Baekhyun, because although you trust them, I don’t. I’m afraid this will backfire on us.” Chanyeol’s voice cracks on the last word, but Baekhyun doesn’t react. “I’m worried that they’re lying and could kill us with no effort, no remorse, because that’s what they were trained for. They are _destroyers_.”

“Then what does that make your fire?”

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” And oh, Chanyeol is pissed off now. 

Baekhyun bites his cheek to hide his exhilaration, to hide how he’s secretly enjoying pressing every button that makes Chanyeol’s anger rise. “Well, you know, your fire is only useful to us when we’re fighting something. All you know how to do is destroy. You’re like the opposite of Yixing.”

The fire that dances along Chanyeol’s palm fills Baekhyun with some twisted sort of glee until he clenches his hand into a fist and quenches it. 

“Don’t do this on purpose, Baek,” sighs Chanyeol. “I hate fighting.”

“But maybe it’s—”

“Baekhyun. Stop.”

“No! Don’t you feel it? Something’s changing, and I don’t know what, but it’s powerful, it’s—”

“Baekhyun!” Chanyeol yells this time, and Baekhyun realizes he’s glowing with energy so bright that Chanyeol has been covering his eyes.

There’s a pause after Baekhyun dims his power down to normal, a sick twist in his stomach at the silence. He feels—unsure, on uneven ground. His whole body is shaking, nerves on fire as Chanyeol removes his hands from his face, expression blank. And Baekhyun can’t handle that. He can’t; he hates this feeling of burning inside, hates the way it makes him want to do something he might regret. 

Baekhyun breathes in, out. “Do you trust me?”

And when Chanyeol doesn’t respond, just gives him a pitying look, Baekhyun packs his meager belongings into a bag (a spare set of clothes, a few pictures) and walks out of their shared room, hoping to find someone who does trust him. 

—

“I was wondering when you’d come find me,” Baëkhyun greets as he opens the door to his room. 

Baekhyun brushes past him in silence. 

“You know, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to say something, maybe a nice ‘hello’ to lighten the mood.” Baëkhyun huffs as his original throws his bag on the floor, not caring where it lands. “‘Hello, Baëkhyun, thank you for letting me in your room. I love what you’ve done with the place in the two weeks you’ve been here—it really gives new life to the shithole we all currently live in.’ Why, thank you, Baekhyun. I call this ‘abandoned mansion chic.’ There’s a few holes in the outer wall, maybe a few roaches if you’re lucky and looking for a snack, but the dandelions growing in the corner really liven this place up, I think. Now, if you turn your attention to the attached bathroom, there’s a—”

“Are you okay?” Baekhyun interrupts. 

Baëkhyun raises an eyebrow at him, as if to say, _Are any of us okay?_

“No, I mean, your face. I cut you open. The scar hasn’t healed yet.” Baekhyun doesn’t know why he cares. He’s not sure if he really does care or if he just wants a distraction from reality and whatever the hell else is out there right now. 

Huffing out a laugh, Baëkhyun taps his nose and winks at him. “I heal faster than you, baby boy. I’m as good as new, despite th—”

Using his light speed (“Cheater,” Baëkhyun will tell him later, “I don’t know how to do that.”), Baekhyun grabs the silver knife from the holster on Baëkhyun’s thigh and presses him into the wall by the door, the sharp blade against his throat drawing a thin line of blood. 

“Don’t call me that.”

Baëkhyun doesn’t seem unnerved at all. He seems bored more than anything, maybe indignant, maybe a spark of some emotion that curls low in his gut—amusing, luring. 

“Are you going to betray us?” Baekhyun asks. 

He licks his lips, a small movement. “I will do my best to not betray your group,” answers Baëkhyun, and the ambiguous possibility of a loophole leaves Baekhyun seething. 

Glancing at the droplets of blood he’s let loose, Baekhyun sees the slight tremor in his hand. They’ll have matching marks on their necks now. The thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth, a sweet poison that seeps through his veins and makes him see red—but not in anger. 

“Are you going to betray me?” Baekhyun whispers. 

Baëkhyun stares back, maintains a sick sort of eye contact with him, like he’s staring into his soul and seeing all of the desperation and abandonment Baekhyun feels, like he’s peeling back the pages of a rotting book. It’s exposing. It’s unwarranted. It’s—

“Never.” Baëkhyun looks beautiful like this—unwavering, the bruises already faded and gone, the mess his hair has become during their tussle together. “I will never betray you, and from this moment onward, I will never lie to you. I am you, and you are me.”

For the first time since entering that prison cell in the basement, Baekhyun breathes, and it feels like fresh air. (It’s not—it’s musty and dark. But he feels _light_.)

Keeping the knife against his neck, Baekhyun leans in and kisses Baëkhyun, soft, gentle.

Baëkhyun lets out a sound, a broken whine, before grabbing onto Baekhyun’s hair and tugging him closer, pulling them together as they turn desperate, and Baekhyun stabs the knife into the wall next to Baëkhyun’s head as he returns the kiss with fervor. It’s wrong, it’s dangerous, it’s absolutely fucking insane because this is some exact replica of him created in a lab through acts of torture and experimentation. Baekhyun has never wanted someone so badly in his entire fucking life. 

They break apart, one of Baekhyun’s hands on the knife hilt and the other grasping the collar of Baëkhyun’s stupid, pretentious jacket, fingers digging into the material that’s worn smooth from use. Inhale, exhale. 

“Why do I feel this way about you?” Baëkhyun whispers. His finger wipes over Baekhyun’s cheekbone, taking a stray tear with it; Baekhyun didn’t even realize he’s been crying. And Baëkhyun is bright—he’s glowing, literally, his wet lips parted slightly in awe as he gazes at his counterpart, his other half. 

“Why do _I_ feel this way about _you_?” echoes Baekhyun. “I haven’t—I don’t—”

“I feel complete.”

And this time, as with every time, it’s Baekhyun who breaks. He closes his eyes and touches their foreheads together, soaking in this moment as much as he can without something overflowing within him. _Something_ , he thinks, but he knows the truth, the truth that feels as innate as his own powers within himself. 

_I hope that someday you will remember this moment._

His voice raspy, he asks, “Do any of the others feel this way? I’ve only known you for a few weeks but I feel like I would do anything, _anything_ for—”

Baëkhyun shushes him. “It’s just us. I’m sure. They tell me everything by now.”

“But why?” Baekhyun’s voice cracks, and it’s embarrassing but also isn’t because he knows Baëkhyun will take him as he is, faults and all. “Why us? It’s like our eyes met, and I felt…”

“…Power,” Baëkhyun finishes for him. “I always felt a strange connection to you, but I think actually meeting you sparked something dormant between us.” He caresses Baekhyun’s cheek, tilting his head to the side, thoughtful. “Maybe it’s something within us. Maybe it’s because of the experiments performed on us”—and Baekhyun shudders at that—“but either way, I don’t want…I may be your counterpart created to take you out of this world, but I don’t want you to think I’m going to do that to you, or that I’m taking advantage of you, or—”

And Baekhyun cuts him off with another kiss, forcing all of his thoughts about that statement into the way he bites at Baëkhyun’s lips and shoves his tongue in, wet and messy and uncontrolled as he tugs at Baëkhyun’s hair and makes him moan softly. He feels _unhinged_ , a piece of him fitting where it shouldn’t, a misalignment in his brain that clicks green, go, when it should be yellow or red or even fucking black. And _fuck_ , it’s beautiful. Baëkhyun tastes like cinnamon and the peaches he had as part of their rations and, most of all, like _himself_. It’s driving him a little crazy. As he pulls the knife out of the wall, he has to pull away from Baëkhyun as well, or he doesn’t know what he’ll fucking do if he’s allowed to keep going. Something irreparable. Maybe something perfect. 

Baekhyun slips the knife into its home on Baëkhyun’s thigh while Baëkhyun attempts to calm his breathing, chest heaving. God, he wants to lean in again, taste him, _devour_ him—

“I want this. I want you, and even if you break me into a million pieces, I know you’ll put me together again because you couldn’t live with yourself otherwise.” Baekhyun laces his trembling fingers with his other half’s steady ones, a link between them. “And I know that because I’d do the same.”

And Baëkhyun smiles. 

—

Baekhyun’s composure has been cracking for a while now. 

There was the incident in Busan four decades ago. They lost three of their group to the Red Force, and a piece of his soul felt like it was shattering each time. They almost lost Minseok and Yixing and Sehun then, too, but they’re alive. They’re fine. 

But even before that…

Five thousand years is a long time to be alive. He’s seen emperors fall and wars lost and the birth of new, beautiful things too many times to count. And above all, Baekhyun has learned that people will always change, including himself. 

He’s the one who was captured first. Baekhyun doesn’t know if there was ever a reason behind him being captured first or if it was just _opportunity_ that allowed the Red Force to take him in. Jongin was next, then Junmyeon and Chanyeol and everyone else, sometimes in pairs. By the time everyone had been captured and subsequently escaped, thirteen years had passed. 

Thirteen years of consistent torture can change a person. 

His soul tastes like ashes in his mouth. 

Baekhyun traces his fingers along Baëkhyun’s spine as he sleeps, curled around him on the narrow mattress, and he wonders how long his other self suffered through the same treatment he did. 

(“Twenty years,” Baëkhyun will tell him someday. “It was only torture because I didn’t have you with me.”)

—

Jongdae frowns at Baekhyun’s belated entrance to the meeting two days after the incident with Chanyeol, eyebrows furrowing when he notices Baëkhyun right behind him. 

It sets Baekhyun’s nerves on edge, and he touches Baëkhyun’s elbow as a light comfort before they split up—he to sit next to Jongdae in the back of the room, Baëkhyun to the front by Junmyeon. With the way Chanyeol pointedly ignores him, Baekhyun doesn’t want Jongdae to hate him, too. He touches Jongdae’s thigh, a _one, two, three_ tapping motion—their trademark knock to enter each other’s rooms to seek comfort when the nightmares get to be too much—but Jongdae remains stoic. 

It hurts. Inhale, exhale, be calm. 

Once everyone has settled down, Junmyeon claps his hands together and asks for quiet. 

It’s not necessary. They’re all silent, apprehensive. 

This is the first meeting they’ve had as a full group, all fifteen of them in one room together, since the café. Jongin can only relay so much information to Jøngin before the latter zones out and zaps away, so they’ve all gathered for a short period of time. 

The meeting commences, and Baekhyun zones out, too. 

Baëkhyun is looking as lethal as ever in his black getup next to Junmyeon—he’s dressed in his _complete outfit_ , as he told him earlier, shiny leather and multiple belts winding around his waist and his thigh, a new, thin silver chain covering the scar across his face. It’s impractical as fuck and sexy as hell. It makes Baekhyun squirm in his seat, thinking about what it would be like to take every one of those belts off, to peel the black leather off his body—

He shakes his head. Can’t think about that right now. 

But watching Baëkhyun is inevitable, the magnetism he has, some natural leadership despite his reluctance of it. _They assigned me as leader because I was the first one to be created._ That’s what he had said last night, guard down after Baekhyun bared his soul to him. _I know all the Red Force’s tricks, all their experiments and methods. So I’m their leader._

And Baekhyun sits at the other end of the room, silent as his other half speaks about their partially concocted plan to infiltrate the facility and break their companions out as well as eradicate any trace that they were ever there. “A mass illusion to make sure they can never come after us again,” he finishes, “but a permanent one.” 

Feeling Jongdae shift next to him, Baekhyun knows he feels the same way—it won’t work. 

“We have to try,” Baekhyun mutters underneath his breath as Junmyeon begins to assign tasks to everyone, asking for their input as well to knock out any loopholes in their plan. 

Jongdae grasps Baekhyun’s wrist and stands suddenly, dragging him out of the room and into the hallway, away from the soft chatter. 

“Why did you say that shit to Chanyeol?” Jongdae asks, straight to the point. 

Baekhyun yanks out of Jongdae’s grasp and rubs at his wrist. The marks from Baëkhyun’s belt faded weeks ago, but he wishes they were there. A reminder. “I don’t know,” he says, honest. “Half the time I wake up, I forget…where I even am, y’know? It’s been years, but I still…” He slips into silence. 

The hand that Jongdae places on his shoulder is more cumbersome than comforting. “Baekhyun, I… You were in the Maze for ten years longer than everyone else, and that has to have had an effect on you, so I don’t blame you for acting up every now and then, but—”

“Acting up?” Baekhyun whips his head up to stare at Jongdae incredulously. “Dae, what’s it like to wake up every day knowing you have the capability to kill and resisting from pulling the trigger? Because that’s what I’ve felt like for the past twenty fucking years, like I’m about to _explode_ , like everything around me will combust from the raw power I feel contained within myself. There’s something _in_ me. There’s something in me and the only way to stop it is—is to—”

“Baekhyun?” someone else says, and his vision fuzzes, and he can’t breathe, he can’t do anything. Jongin repeats his name, Jongdae joining in. _Baekhyun, Baekhyun, Baekhyun._

Baekhyun releases his hold on Jongdae’s shirt—when did he grab him?—and ignores the fear on his face and crouches on the ground, tugging at his hair in frustration. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , he’s burning up, he’s drowning—

“Hey.” 

Inhale, exhale. 

There’s an arm around his shoulders and a nose pressed into his neck, soft lips near his skin, and it’s _right_. Baëkhyun’s breath washes over him, sweet, cloying, tempting, and Baekhyun nearly chokes trying to breathe in his sandalwood and leather scent to calm himself down. 

“It’s okay,” Baëkhyun whispers, and Baekhyun believes him. He shifts until they’re facing each other, his hands cupping Baekhyun’s face. It’s delicate. “Your name is Baekhyun. You were born on planet number twelve forty-eight. You have the power of light, which is a beautiful thing to have and not a curse. Your favorite color is red. I am you, and you are me.” 

The first thing Baekhyun sees when he opens his eyes is himself, his other half, like looking into a mirror that’s distorted slightly—blue eyes and white hair, a silver chain running across his face. Beautiful. 

The second thing Baekhyun sees is Jongin’s expression of shock. 

The third thing Baekhyun sees is Jongdae’s look of wariness and disappointment. 

Conflict is inevitable—on one hand, there are his group members, his teammates and family, who’ve been there through almost everything. ( _Almost_ being the key word here. Where were they for ten years while Baekhyun was being poked and prodded and dissected?) And then there’s Baëkhyun, his other half, someone who Baekhyun barely knows yet the instinct is there, the innate desire. The need. 

There’s a war, and Baekhyun runs from it. 

—

**act three. mars**

Baëkhyun doesn’t announce his entrance—one minute he’s not there, and the next, he’s hovering by the door to his _(their)_ room. Quiet, a ghost. The mansion aches in silence, and for the first time since he’s been here, Baekhyun resents the stillness, the deadened quality of the air he breathes in and out. Mayhem, pandemonium, the monotone buzz of life—he craves it. 

His own voice cracks the still air they’ve created between them. “Why don’t they trust me? They’re all I have.”

“Are they?”

Baekhyun stays where he is, knees pulled to his chest in mild comfort, knowing what his counterpart means but not wanting to admit it out loud. He digs his blunt nails into his forearms. 

“I trust you.” Baëkhyun’s words dig in deeper than his nails. “I trust you more than I trust anyone in my group or your group.”

With a flash of light, Baekhyun ends up with the silver knife at Baëkhyun’s throat, a macabre sort of déjà vu, tilting his chin up with the sharp point of it. And fuck, he shouldn’t be beautiful like this, bangs mussed up a little and a fire in his eyes, lips tilted into a smirk at Baekhyun’s impulsive action. A little nudge and it’s all over for him. So easy. So simple. So—

“Do you still trust me?” Baekhyun whispers. 

Licking his lips, Baëkhyun presses forward until the tip of the knife nicks his skin, drawing a soft noise from him. “My answer is always going to be yes, Baekhyun. You can tie me up, you can torture me, you can take me out of this world, and I will still trust you.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Say it.”

“Do _you_ trust _me_?”

The question throws Baekhyun off for a split second. “Yes.” 

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Baëkhyun growls low in his throat, and it’s all the warning he gets before Baëkhyun grabs his wrist and twists it, knife falling into his hands as he pins Baekhyun’s arms behind him and forces the edge of the blade at Baekhyun’s throat instead. The sudden change, the heat of Baëkhyun’s body against his back, his soft voice as he speaks—it’s driving him mad. And then Baekhyun raises his eyes to the aged floor-length mirror across from him, sees the way Baëkhyun hovers behind him like some caricature of the devil or the angel on his shoulders, and Baekhyun thinks he’s a little bit of both. 

“Why do you trust me?” Baëkhyun murmurs in his ear. “I could easily snap your neck, I could sink this knife into you and end us both right here.”

“But you won’t.” 

“No, I won’t.” Baëkhyun breathes in, out, nosing at the sensitive skin underneath Baekhyun’s ear. His hand drifts down and brushes against Baekhyun’s half-hard dick, causing both of them to gasp. “Let me give you what you need. I could ruin you, sweetheart.”

Baekhyun laughs and tilts his head back. “I’ve been ruined for a while now, I think.”

“I am you, and you are me.” The words are heavy, laced with want as they’re hissed into his ear, almost like a sick prayer at this point. 

For the first time, Baekhyun echoes back, “I am you, and you are me.”

And Baëkhyun grinds his hips forward, teeth biting into the side of Baekhyun’s neck in the same movement, a sting of pleasure zipping down his spine, a quiet _fuck_ falling from his lips. Baëkhyun fumbles with the button on his pants, huffing in frustration when he can’t get them open one-handed. 

“Let me”—Baekhyun swallows roughly—“let me just, fuck, I’ll put on a show for you or something, just please—”

Baëkhyun lets go of his wrists immediately, places his hand on Baekhyun’s waist instead, tilts his head back with the knife. “Don’t misbehave.”

“I won’t,” Baekhyun snarls. 

“I won’t,” mocks Baëkhyun, cutting a thin line into the side of Baekhyun’s neck, making him gasp. “You won’t what, baby boy?” He locks eyes with Baekhyun in the mirror as he licks the trail of blood from his neck. It’s absolutely obscene, obscenely beautiful, and Baekhyun moans. “Won’t let me tear you apart and put you together again? You should let me try.”

Baekhyun shivers. “I won’t misbehave as long as you fuck me like you fucking mean it, like I deserve.”

There’s blood on Baëkhyun’s teeth as he grins and backs away, keeping the knife pointed at him as he demands, “Take your clothes off.”

“Shouldn’t you as well?”

“You said you’d put a show on for me, darling—I’m just taking advantage of that.”

With a deep breath, Baekhyun shrugs out of his jacket, letting it drop to the floor with a clatter from all the tools he has in there. Next are his combat boots, a bit annoying as he has to unlace them and kick them off along with his socks, but if he’s feeling annoyed, then Baëkhyun surely is as well. Small benefits. 

“You kind of suck at this,” Baëkhyun remarks. “Thought you were gonna give me a good show.”

Baekhyun darts forward, twisting the knife out of Baëkhyun’s grasp and kicking him in the stomach. Baëkhyun hits the floor with a half-groan, half-laugh. 

“Maybe _you_ need to be put in your place,” says Baekhyun softly, a tinge of warning to his words as he bends over to grab something from his discarded jacket. “We like it a little rough, after all.” 

The safety switch clicks loudly in the room as Baekhyun straightens and aims the Sig Sauer at his counterpart. 

Baëkhyun throws his head back onto the floor and downright cackles, breathless, while Baekhyun smirks at him. “I always figured you were a kinky fuck. What d’you wanna do with that, baby? Hold it to my head while you ride me, take you apart piece by piece, but you hold all the control?” He spreads his legs apart, the leather stretching around his thighs. Quite the visual.

“I think…” Baekhyun trails off as he stalks closer, drops to his knees between Baëkhyun’s thighs. “I think you should try to keep quiet.” And with that, he sets both weapons to the side and rips his shirt off in a fluid movement, grabs Baëkhyun’s wrists and ties them together with the fabric. “I think you should try to keep still.” He pins Baëkhyun’s cloth-bound wrists above his head and stabs the knife between them to keep him in place. “And I think I’m going to blow you until you’re begging me to fuck you.”

The noise that falls past Baëkhyun’s lips is downright sinful, but he still says, “I think I should fuck you instead.”

“Why’s that?”

“You want to be taken care of.” Baëkhyun hisses as his pants are tugged down his thighs, exposing him to the cool air of the room. “You pull out your fancy gun, use my knife against me, but you’re still a romantic at heart. You want to be cherished.”

Baekhyun grabs the gun again and nudges the barrel under Baëkhyun’s chin. “Can I not feel cherished like this?” he asks. Before he gets an answer, he dips down and takes Baëkhyun’s half-hard dick in his mouth, tonguing the head, coaxing him to full hardness with his fingers and lips, spit running down his length. 

But Baëkhyun doesn’t stop speaking. “You want to be fucked by me, I can see it in your eyes. Just begging to be taken, face down—”

Digging his nails into Baëkhyun’s waist, Baekhyun forces his throat to relax, to take himself in deeper before swallowing, tears in his eyes. Baëkhyun swears. (“Fuck, have you always taken dick this well? It took me ages to be able to deepthroat, and here you are, choking on my cock like you fucking belong there, ’cause you do, don’t you? I love it, so I know you do, too.”) Baekhyun drags his nails down Baëkhyun’s thigh, leaving heavy red marks and causing his dick to twitch. But then Baëkhyun jolts his hips up and Baekhyun has to pull off, gagging.

“Sorry, sorry, fuck, I’m close, your mouth is just so—”

And Baëkhyun is truly fucked out like this, face flushed and lips bitten raw, a smear of blood on his cheek and eyes bright. He’s beautiful. 

“You’re beautiful,” Baekhyun says, voice hoarse, “just like this. Mine.”

The gun knocks against Baëkhyun’s jaw as he whispers, “Yours. All yours.”

And he hasn’t done anything like this in a long time, well over a decade, always felt like something was—missing. Some integral part of him was missing whenever he wandered to a club and drank himself stupid and ate some girl out in the backseat of her car or let some guy blow him in a shitty bathroom, and yeah, no one expects romance with a mediocre hookup, but there was always a hollow feeling in his chest afterward, an ache. He looks at the sheen of sweat on Baëkhyun’s chest through the plunge of his revealing suit jacket, the way his white-blond fringe falls into his eyes, the silver chain glinting strangely in the early morning light. And it _fits_. It fits, secure in his chest like some dark canary he never plans on letting out of its cage. And for the first time in his long, miserable life, he feels complete. 

Baekhyun crawls up and kisses him then, can’t hold himself back as he shoves his tongue in and tastes himself, sandalwood and firewood and the rusty tang of iron flooding all of his senses. _Mine._ His hand reaches down and strokes Baëkhyun’s dick, muffling his lovely noises with his lips. _Mine._ And a final flick of his wrist drives Baëkhyun over the edge, his mouth slackened and eyebrows furrowed in pleasure with the barrel of the gun pressed underneath his chin. _Mine._

He’s always wanted someone to call his own. Even if it is himself.

Before Baëkhyun has even come down from his orgasm, Baekhyun is up and rummaging through his bag he left on the floor, not caring that his hand is covered in come. Fuck, his lube should be in here—

“Come back,” Baëkhyun whines. He’s managed to kick off his boots and pants without the use of his hands. “I want you, c’mere, baby.”

Without speaking, Baekhyun aims and fires the gun, shattering part of the wooden flooring near Baëkhyun’s head. “Just practice!” he shouts so that no one comes running to the room out of concern. Last thing he needs Junmyeon to know is that he’s fucking himself. 

Baëkhyun laughs, a little wild. “You’re absolutely insane,” he breathes out. “Love that in a guy. I told you that we’re more alike than you think, that you should _embrace_ it, and look at you now, darling.”

“Look at me now,” echoes Baekhyun. He gestures with the gun. “Take off your jacket. Get on the bed.”

“Yes, sir,” he drawls sarcastically before forcing his wrists out of the ruined shirt and putting the knife blade between his teeth as he undoes each belt one by one. It’s slow, drawn out. Baekhyun swallows at the sight, his own broad shoulders and lean waist being revealed. So much perfect skin that awaits on the bed. 

He wants to cut him open and see what’s inside. 

Baekhyun takes his pants off with one hand while his clone watches, eyes darting between his face and the gun trained on him. “I think…” He licks his lips, wonders if they’re red from sucking him off. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Well, we’re not just gonna fuck once, are we?” Baëkhyun points the knife at him and sighs, dramatic as always. “Would be a shame.”

Baekhyun pretends to think about it. “No, we’re not just gonna fuck once.”

“Then come here, darling,” he beckons. Baekhyun throws a leg over his hips and leans down to brush their noses together, so close. His counterpart places slim hands on his waist before he continues, “I would love if you fucked me, pinned me down and took me so well, but ever since we met, I’ve wondered just how well you’d be able to handle it if I took you for myself. My perfect self brought down to my level.”

“I’m not perfect,” Baekhyun breathes out, “not perfect at all.”

He speaks like he wasn’t interrupted at all. “I wondered if I could make you feel the way that you make me feel, if it was possible to ever be able to have you. I imagined I fucked myself on my fingers, wishing it was your dick, and it never seemed to be enough.”

“Fuck me, fuck me, please, make me yours—”

Baekhyun tosses the gun to the side as Baëkhyun lunges up and brings their lips together messily, carving a neat little space in Baekhyun’s fucked up little brain for himself as he takes the bottle of lube from him and pours too much on his fingers, too focused on the kiss, too out of it as he pushes a finger into Baekhyun’s hole, swallowing his whine with tongue and teeth. It’s too much, it’s not enough, and it’s just one fucking finger, but he’s already so close to the edge—

“Hands and knees, hands and knees, c’mon,” Baëkhyun demands, “wanna eat you out, see what pretty noises we can make.”

All he can make is an incoherent sound as he complies, head resting on his forearms as Baëkhyun trails his fingers up his thighs and forces them apart more, vulnerable. Exposed. But it’s Baëkhyun, who he trusts, trusts more than anyone else at the moment so all he can do is muffle his groan into the bed as Baëkhyun slides his tongue into his hole along with his finger. 

The knife—Baekhyun grabs it from the sheets where his clone abandoned it, and he bites his forearm to stifle his moans and drives the knife into the bed, tearing it open as Baëkhyun adds another finger and licks around them. It’s so much all at once. Everything inside of him is drawn taut, ready to snap. 

He wonders deliriously if they’ve been ready to snap since they first met. 

They stay like that for—fuck, he doesn’t even know how long, long enough that Baëkhyun’s tongue curls into him until he can’t think, until he’s three fingers deep and begging for more. 

“Not yet,” Baëkhyun whispers, and Baekhyun sobs because he wants, he _needs_ — “You’re so beautiful like this that I think you should come like this.”

“No, need you inside me—”

“I _am_ inside you, darling,” says Baëkhyun before he digs his fingers into his prostate, making Baekhyun choke out an inhuman sound. “So perfect, so beautiful, just for me. Such a pretty boy.”

“I’ll kill you,” Baekhyun snarls, and Baëkhyun laughs, exhilarated. 

“Then who would fuck you like I do? Chanyeol? Jongin? I doubt it. Or maybe you’d ask one of their clones to fuck you, maybe you’d ask for both of them at once since you’re such a greedy little—”

Baekhyun kicks out and manages to flip them over so he’s on top, knife hovering at Baëkhyun’s throat like it was made to be there. It’s a tense moment of silence as they just breathe together. Inhale, exhale. Fuck, he’s gorgeous, his face all wet and messy from eating him out, cheeks flushed high, eyes piercing. And Baekhyun is finally sure of what he wants to do, more sure than he’s been all day. 

He brings the knife up and kisses the blade of it before using the tip to cut in the middle of his lower lip, drawing blood until he can feel a little run down his chin and onto Baëkhyun’s chest, small drops of himself. 

“Holy _fuck_ ,” is all Baëkhyun says until he leans down and does the same to him. The red is beautiful against his pink lips. 

“You are mine, and I am yours,” says Baekhyun, letting go and forcing their mouths together, blood and all. It stings. It should. He likes it. It’s not pretty, but it’s _real_ , and he can already feel the cut begin to heal by the time he pulls away. Blood is smeared all over Baëkhyun’s lips and chin. He’s beautiful. 

“I love it when I can push you to the edge and make you lose it like that.”

Baekhyun touches the tear in the corner of his clone’s eye with his finger. He’s never seen him cry before. It fits him. “I do, too.”

They’re quiet, gentle after that. Baëkhyun touches him with reverence, like he’s made of glass as he lays Baekhyun out and pushes into him, small kisses laced along his jawline. Baekhyun’s breath hitches as he rakes his nails down his back, receiving a moan for his efforts. He hopes the welts stay long enough for him to see. 

“Fuck me,” he whispers, “like you mean it. Love me, please, love me like no one else—”

Baëkhyun twines their fingers together, a small comfort. “No one else will ever be able to love you the way that I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you—”

When he fucks into Baekhyun finally, _finally_ , it’s Baëkhyun who doesn’t stop making noise, little praises of _you’re so beautiful_ and _you’re mine, all mine_. Baekhyun has never felt more wanted in his entire life—the slow pace from their frantic foreplay from earlier, the endless praises, the sheen of sweat on Baëkhyun’s skin and the way his white hair shines in the early morning light like something new. 

“You’re beautiful, too, you know,” he says back. He squeezes his fingers around Baëkhyun’s throat, soft yet hard enough to feel. “Just like this. Mine.” 

Baëkhyun makes a choked off sound and thrusts into him harder, twisting his hips just right and hitting that spot inside him that makes Baekhyun’s whole body shudder. He’s close, the combination of the stimulation and the praise just on the right edge of being _too much_ , and his hand scrambles around on the bed to find something. The knife is what he finds first, shining silver with half-dried blood. As he holds it to Baëkhyun’s throat, he says, “Come for me, baby boy.”

His clone is loud when he comes, his moan almost needy, eyes almost black from desire. Baekhyun licks the blood from the cut on his neck as he holds him close, sees white, and comes as well, his own name on his lips. 

It’s damning, that’s for sure. 

Not much changes when they come down. Baekhyun is worn and sore and just wants a hot shower, maybe with Baëkhyun. It’s calm except for their harsh breathing, a creak from the old mansion. The cut on his lip stings, the blood tacky. He licks his lips. Everything feels…definite. Balanced. Despite the fact that he just held a loaded gun to his clone’s head and then got fucked within an inch of his life, literally, he’s at ease. 

Baëkhyun trails his fingers through Baekhyun’s hair. “You…changed.”

He tries for humor. “That seems to be the consensus lately from the rest of the group.”

“No, Baekhyun. Your hair is white.”

That gets him out of bed and in front of the mirror, and sure enough, his hair is bright white, just like Baëkhyun’s. He touches it in awe. 

Baëkhyun comes up behind him and wraps an arm around his waist, around the claiming fingerprints there from where Baëkhyun held on while fucking into him. He thinks of his previous thought, the angel or the devil on his shoulder, and how he’s a little bit of both. 

Twirling a lock of hair between his fingers, Baëkhyun says, “It suits you.”

—

Falling into the sea is nothing new in his dreams. Baekhyun escaped physically from the Red Force twenty years ago, but mentally, he revisits them in his dreams, whether it’s the white walls of containment or jumping from a cliff into the clear, blue waters below. 

He wakes, gasping for breath because he _felt_ —he was drowning. Something had been waiting for him in the sea this time. 

But Baëkhyun is waiting for him this time as well, stroking his hair and calming him, _it’s not happening now_. But it could. It could, and that’s what scares Baekhyun the most. 

“The plan isn’t going to work,” he says into the dark.

“I know.” It’s comforting to know that Baëkhyun is just as broken as him, the same reflection of the shattered mirror, but his stance remains unwavering. Baekhyun is new, a tentative step onto land after being at sea for years, while Baëkhyun is his rock. The moonlight shines off his hair like a halo. “That’s why I have our own plan for us.”

—

“You’ve changed.” 

Sehun is a man of few words, for which Baekhyun is grateful, but he seems to be in a particularly chatty mood as they’re gearing up for their departure to the base. 

“We’ve all changed,” says Baekhyun, sliding the new magazine into his gun and testing the safety. He taught Baëkhyun how to shoot yesterday, a bunch of apples lined up on the fence of the abandoned orchard, and he said he’d suck him off right there if he shot every one. 

Baëkhyun didn’t miss. The way he held the gun was almost gentle. 

He didn’t care to be gentle later that day when he fucked into Baekhyun, knife at his throat and mumbled promises on his lips. Baekhyun misses that. 

“You know what I mean, Baek. You’re irritable with all of us, you never leave your room unless it’s for food or it’s with _him_ , you’ve even changed your hair color to match, and you’re just…”

“I’m just what?”

Sehun sighs as he finishes tying his boots. “Remember when you took Jongin and I to that arcade and wired everything so we could play endless games for free? That’s what’s different. You’ve alienated Chanyeol. Jongdae doesn’t know how to treat you. Jongin…wants to see the best in you. But you’re always with _him_.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean? Are you jealous that I have someone new in my life that isn’t you? For the first time in years…” Baekhyun avoids Sehun’s eyes, doesn’t want to see the disappointment in them like with Chanyeol and with Jongdae. “For the first time since I was captured by the Red Force, I feel—I don’t feel like an intruder. When I’m with him, I feel… _alive_.”

“Do you really?” asks a new voice. 

Baëkhyun saunters through the doorway in all his glory, like he owns the place, like Sehun wouldn’t gladly shoot him with his bow if the opportunity struck. He drapes himself over Baekhyun’s back and hooks his chin over his shoulder. “Do I make you feel alive, darling?”

“I feel like myself.” The words sound pleading, even to his own ears, and Baëkhyun laughs softly.

“You’re not…” Sehun makes a disgusted face as though he can’t picture it, doesn’t want to. “Or are you?” 

“What do you think?” Baëkhyun wraps an arm around Baekhyun’s waist and pulls him impossibly closer. It’s possessive. Baekhyun bites his cheek to stifle a quiet noise. 

Sehun swears before saying, “I warned you,” and leaving the room. 

“They’ll never understand—I told you that.” His teeth scrape along the side of Baekhyun’s neck as the latter lets out a soft whine. “You make me feel alive, too,” Baëkhyun whispers in his ear. 

Baekhyun leans back into his other half. 

It’s time. 

—

The first half of their plan—it actually works. 

It’s Sehun and Jongin who infiltrate this time to get Minseok, Yixing, and Kyungsoo out along with Chanyeøl to guide them. And within the hour, the six of them are in the sand, Jongin saying, “We set off all the alarms as planned. Everyone should be coming.”

Everything seems to happen so fast, Baekhyun barely breathes as Junmyeon says his name. 

Baëkhyun tugs on his wrist. “C’mon. It’s our time to shine.”

Jøngin takes them both inside the base, salutes them, and then they’re alone. It’s all up to them now. 

It’s the pull in his gut that leads him forward in Baëkhyun’s footsteps, quiet; they’re hunting, after all. Baëkhyun turns into an alcove before facing Baekhyun, placing his hands on either side of his face. It’s tender. Sweet. He’s always so sweet. 

“You remember the plan, right? Let it all go,” Baëkhyun whispers. “I got you.”

Baekhyun knows this. He trusts him. He leans forward, touches their foreheads together, and lets go. 

—

_What do you see when you dream?_

_Nothing. I see black and hear silence, as do you._

Baekhyun closes his eyes, breathes in, out. One, two. The silence this time isn’t eerie—it’s pure. 

It’s Junmyeon and Jongin who come to collect them however many minutes or hours later, who find Baekhyun and Baëkhyun clinging onto each other, surrounded in the aftermath. 

“What have you done?” Junmyeon asks, his voice refracting inside Baekhyun’s skull, an incorrect kaleidoscope. “What did you do to them?”

Jongin says nothing, just grabs them and moves them outside onto the sand before he begins retching. He’s always had a softer side to him. Baekhyun can’t even be mad about it because it’s not a pretty sight in there, hundreds lying around them. The smell alone is unpleasant. 

He touches at the blood on his face and his finger shines red in the sunlight. It feels nice. Warm. 

“It’s over,” Baekhyun answers.

“You said you would create an illusion! Not kill them all! There were innocents in there, Baekhyun, people like us.” Oh, Junmyeon is upset. 

He looks at his team members, the ones who have stood by his side for centuries without fail. There’s disgust, disbelief, shame. Dishonor. Baëkhyun was right, as usual. Baëkhyun seems to be right more often than not these days. 

“Did you plan this?” says Jongdae. “Baekhyun, did you plan this with him, or was it a mistake of too much power, or was it all _his_ fault—”

Baekhyun uses the last of his strength to gather his light speed to knock Yixīng out, a fist to the side of his head. Can’t have him ruin their plan by healing him. The original Yixing is too weak; he’s not a threat. 

Ignoring the yells of outrage, he turns to face Baëkhyun, at the glint of the metal face chain in the warm, warm sunlight as he stands in front of him, following him everywhere. Mesmerizing. Baëkhyun isn’t shadow where he himself is light; he’s not the silver to his gold or the moon to his sun or the chaos to his order—Baëkhyun is a reflection of Baekhyun and nothing more. Slightly distorted but ultimately the same. 

“I am you, and you are me,” he says. 

And Baëkhyun flashes a dark smile at him before plunging the silver knife into Baekhyun’s chest. 

The blood on his lips is warmer than the sunlight as he coughs it up, the metallic iron taste hurting his teeth. 

Someone is screaming—not him, that’s for sure, because he’s gasping for air, collapsing to his knees on the sand under the desert sun, collapsing with Baëkhyun because blood is coming from his mouth as well. He’s beautiful like this. It’s like the whole world has gone silent except for them, the way Baëkhyun holds him, tender. He falls sideways, lays his hand on Baëkhyun’s cheek as they gaze into each other’s eyes. It’s poetic. Reflections. Something for the storybooks. 

The last awareness Baekhyun has before fading is knowing that someone else is falling with him. 

_What do you see when you dream?_

_Nothing. I see black and hear silence, as do you._

—

**epilogue.**

_three years later_

They never stay in one place for more than a couple of months out of fear of being discovered—Jakarta, Berlin, Cairo, Lima, Sydney, Tehran, Hong Kong. Always larger cities because it’s easier to blend in, no _have you seen those white-haired twins?_ They made that mistake once and never again.

Seattle is where they are now, dreary rainstorms and pines giving a great excuse to cover themselves up, a cloak from society. 

Baekhyun unlocks their motel room door and stomps the mud off his boots, swearing as the key slips out of his fingers onto the faded carpet. Baëkhyun laughs at him and picks it up, mimicking the drop over and over. Asshole. They play-fight a little, and it’s nice when Baekhyun wins, a grin on his face as he pins Baëkhyun to the bed and kisses him. It’s sweet. He’s always sweet, like fresh rainwater and apples. 

As he pushes his hand underneath Baëkhyun’s shirt and scrapes his nails along his side, Baekhyun murmurs, “Do you think we should let them live?”

“I’m curious as to how they found us. We’re supposed to be dead—that illusion took a lot out of us, would be a shame if it didn’t work properly.” Baëkhyun gasps as his other half drags his teeth along his neck, biting gently. “And I was always closest with Jøngin back when we were in captivity, so I think it would be a shame to have to kill him.”

Baekhyun flicks the safety off his Sig and aims it at Jongin and his clone in the corner of the room, watching the scene before them in silence. They don’t seem as freaked out as they should be. “Speak,” he demands. “Why are you here?”

Jongin wraps an arm around Jøngin’s shoulders. Protective. “We feel it, too,” he says. 

They look at each other. Baekhyun and Baëkhyun. It’s been so long, just the two of them, and Baekhyun grasps his other half’s hand in his to ground himself. 

And Baëkhyun smiles. 

One, two, three, four. 

**Author's Note:**

> baekhyun with a gun in the superm teasers really drove my mind into a different dimension and i came out of there as a changed person. 
> 
> this was SO much fun to write. i hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/milftaemin) | [curiouscat](http://curiouscat.qa/lesbiansiyeon)
> 
> special thanks to alex, alex, miri, raine, sky, and viv for tolerating me. ♡


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